Experiments in Making

I got my very first bit of feedback! Actually I got the same feedback from two different, but very reliable sources. The first is fellow blogger, Shaheen Peerbhai. She’s got an amazing food blog called ‘the purple foodie‘. In fact it was her blog that inspired me to start ‘the pink stitch’. It was, I most confess, a blatant ‘monkey see, monkey do’ moment. I saw, I liked, I copied! The second, was my long-standing friend Barbara. Barbara is a bio-chemistry PhD, and a very no-nonsense kind of person. So between the two of them, this piece of feedback is worth publishing! It was, in brief, be more explicit! “Document the process of working more rigorously so other people can understand how to do it”. Enough said! From now on, documentation galore! That said, this next piece was made before I got the helpful feedback, so it is very light on the documentation. But from here on in…I solemly swear to document!

Back to the piece. For my final couple of classes we were told to make a pillow. Now I have many pillows, too many, and no one I knew needed one pillow. But my sister’s daughter Layla, was in the market for a blanket. So pillow brief turned into blanket brief. I bought the Halihali print from Marimekko (for the front of the blanket) and coupled it with a pink and white striped fabric from John Lewis (for the back of the blanket). For the blanket opening, I used large purple buttons (also from John Lewis) and used a special sewing machine attachment for the button holes. This attachment is a very nifty piece of machinery, you simply click in on beside the needle, measure your button, and the machine does the rest.

A word of caution, there is a limit to the size of the buttons you can use. I originally found these great 5cm purple buttons, that were too big for the attachment, so I had to switch to a smaller 3cm purple button. Still good, but it missed some of the pizazz of the bigger buttons. Here are some photos of the final product.

In our second class we did seams. Five different kinds, and this was surprisingly more difficult then I would have expected. The first seam, was pretty standard: two pieces of material stitched together leaving a 2 cm edge to the end, then iron back. The seam sits on the inside in this case. The second seam, which is recommended for aprons or kitchen towels needs a bit of a special fold; first you fold over the material at 1 cm, and then again at 2cm, you then stitch at 1 mm from the edge. This last bit with the 1 mm edge was tricky! The third seam had a fairly complicated folding process (see diagram above). But it made a very nice clean, double edges seam. This seam is apparently often used in coats. The last two seams are variations on a seam with a lip. The first of the two was slightly more standard, the second is made with three pieces of material instead of just two. Next week is zippers! Visible and Invisible. And then after that we are starting our first personal project. I will be making a play mat for my sisters two new baby twins girls.

I had my very first ever sewing class last week. The classes are being held in a basement in Tottenham court road, where I am being taught by a Korean seamstress; . There are two students: me and a Korean flower arranger; Minyoung. We have two hours a week at a bargain price of 10 per hour, and I am over the moon with excitement… simple pleasures. In our first class, we were introduced to our sewing machines. My machine is the Brother LS-2125, apparently this is a great machine for beginners. Minyoung is on a Singer, her machine looks far more modern and quite frankly much swankier then mine… mine looks more like the conservative older aunt of the Singer, but still, apparently its better. We each had to sew three patterns. In principle it was mean to be quite easy, just follow the lines, but it turns out following the line is much harder then I had ever expected. Still, just to underline the point, I still found the whole thing incredibly exciting! Next class we are working on different seams…